Polling the hunches
Explaining Labour’s Landslip
Robert Worcester and Roger Mortimore
Politico’s, 312pp, £20.00
Explaining Labour’s Landslip may not be the most obvious choice for a Christmas stocking-filler, especially not for the 38.7 per cent of people who decided not to head to the polling station in May. But, for the political obsessives and the politically curious at whom it is aimed, it will fill the post-Christmas lull very nicely. Whether you want to check out people’s pre-election satisfaction with local bus services, or wonder why only 9 per cent of school children trust journalists to tell the truth (has Alastair Campbell changed the curriculum?), there is plenty here to engage and entertain.
In his rather self-congratulatory foreword, Robert Worcester sets out his involvement in previous elections since 1970, even suggesting that the pollsters nearly got it right in 1992. In this election, of course, the pollsters were bang on – predicting a sharply reduced but comfortable Labour majority.
The book describes how the electorate came to the same collective conclusion about the choices on offer as Henry Kissinger did when asked about the Iran-Iraq war: ‘It is a pity that one side has to win.’ The result certainly left all sides feeling a little dispirited. Labour had the lowest winning number of votes ever recorded. It lost the popular vote in England. A good number of largely Blairite MPs were booted out and, for a brief period after the results, it looked like Tony Blair could be forced out within weeks.
The Conservatives performed well below their expectations. They flat-lined in the polls. And the delirious way in which they celebrated narrow victories in Guildford and St Albans told you all you needed to know about how far they have to go to form a government again.
The Lib Dems did not achieve the breakthrough they wanted, and their political strategy seemed as confused as their leader on manifesto day-tacking to the left, and losing votes to the right.
The book details in often bewildering detail the factors which led to this result, with endless tables covering trust in Blair, approval ratings for Michael Howard, and polls in the target marginals. It does this without much of a thesis. So the reader is offered evidence, often contradictory, about the electorate’s views on every issue, but it is left to us to choose which pieces of evidence are most important. In this sense, the book doesn’t really explain Labour’s landslip at all. But it allows us at least to back up our hunches with facts. Or at least with polling evidence.
One omission among all these tables is the evidence which the betting markets provided. The spread-betting markets on the number of Labour and Tory seats were the share prices of the political parties, showing which news was – and wasn’t – having an impact on the voters. In the end, these markets were very accurate predictors. They reacted to polls, of course, but they also took in other sources of information. A section in the book on how these markets changed in the year up to the election would have been illuminating.
Of course, the real reason for reading about the last election is to find clues about the next one. Again, the authors are happy simply to present the evidence rather than give their views on what will happen, or what each party’s strategy should be.
For me, one fact above all stands out as key. In 1992, the Conservative lead over Labour among women was 6 per cent higher than it was among men. At this election, that situation was exactly reversed. The Tories actually lost votes among women in the election, and among women under 55 Labour’s lead was massive. To win in 2009, David Cameron’s key task will be to secure a shift in the votes of women back towards the Tories. When just 9 per cent of Conservative MPs are female, it will be fascinating to see how he goes about it.
Tim Allan worked for Tony Blair from 1992 to 1998, and now runs Portland, a PR firm
Talking history
Old Labour to New: The Dreams that Inspired, the Battles that Divided
Greg Rosen
Politico’s, 569pp, £30.00
Speeches, and the orators who deliver them, have the power to change people’s minds, and thus change the world. The great orators of the Labour party have used speeches variously to win ideological arguments, succeed in winning support for bills, or have simply spoken from the heart on a matter of principle. In the introduction to his fine book, compiling speeches by key Labour figures from 1888 to 1997, Greg Rosen states: ‘In the great battle for Labour’s soul, the weapon was the word, and the word was at its most powerful when wielded by some of the finest orators that politics has known.’
The quotation is indicative of Rosen’s purpose for the book. He wants to provide a history of the Labour party through the medium of speeches, and highlight the role that those speeches played in the battles for the type of democratic socialism, or social democracy, that particular orators desired. He also uses speeches and speech exchanges between rival politicians to highlight the political battles that have shaped Labour party history.
In doing so, Rosen selects a broad range of controversial and famous speeches, ranging from Keir Hardie to Tony Blair. He also provides comments on the context of the speeches and some historical evaluation. The book is very long, but thoroughly comprehensive. It is well balanced in terms of pre and post-1945 events and avoids giving primacy to a particular ideological group in the Labour party. This endeavour naturally means that the author is forced to rehearse observations previously made in the vast canon of scholarship on the Labour party. That said, the originality of this project is in trying to understand the salient events in Labour’s history through speeches, and particularly through speech exchanges between leading Labour politicians.
I particularly enjoyed reading extracts from Hugh Gaitskell’s speeches from 1959 to 1961 on defence policy, especially debates over Britain’s nuclear status. Rosen manages to capture the internecine politics of the day, setting views expressed by Michael Foot and Frank Cousins against Denis Healey and Gaitskell himself. This helps to put current Labour divisions over defence and security issues in context, namely, that the role of the state in the defence and security of the UK has continually pitched socialist against socialist.
One obvious criticism, however, is that there are no speeches recorded in the book since 1997. Rosen applies no overt caveat nor gives a reason for this. The title Old Labour to New does suggest some comment on New Labour. Furthermore, the book ends with a chapter on the 1997 election campaign, then an after-word entitled, New Labour: Old Values? in which New Labour’s achievements and approach to governing is portrayed as historically similar to previous Labour administrations. This I found a little unsatisfactory. If Rosen wanted to comment on New Labour then why not cite some of the major speeches made between 1997 and 2005 and then evaluate their context and significance? The absence of substantive analysis of New Labour is heightened by the fact that the book opens and closes with references to understanding New Labour. Therefore, it would more fully achieve its goal if New Labour in government had been assessed, and had some of the speeches since 1997 been included.
Overall, however, this is a very well researched history, which will be a great resource for both students and laymen interested in the ideas and history of the Labour party. Rosen should be commended on writing a scholarly and informed piece of work, and for giving credence to speeches and speech exchanges, providing the student of Labour history with a closer seat of observation when evaluating the role of ideas in their historical context.
Dr Matt Beech is a lecturer at the department of politics, University of York
An honest laugh
The Truth With Jokes
Al Franken
Penguin, 352pp, £17.99
Since the publication in 2003 of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Al Franken has progressed from haranguing radio talk-show hosts to joining their ranks (via Air America Radio). He has also expressed an emerging desire to go into politics, positioning himself as a possible senatorial candidate for Minnesota in 2008.
Now he is the author of The Truth With Jokes, a book that can be read as an extended campaign speech complete with made-up memories (supposedly written in 2015) of Senator Franken’s legislative triumphs. Like Franken’s previous books, this one is made up of insult-humour derived from dead-serious conviction. But this book inevitably poses the question whether comedy and campaigning can go hand in hand.
The book deals with Bush’s successful 2004 campaign (‘based on fear, smears and queers’, as Franken puts it). It also discusses what Franken considers the ‘seeds of the Republican collapse’, sown in Iraq and in debates over social security and Terri Schiavo. ‘In politics’, he writes, ‘you can never turn the other cheek. Especially when you’re fighting the Christian right.’ He calls divorce, not gays, ‘the biggest threat to marriage’.
The Truth With Jokes went to press before Katrina and the indictment of Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, so it already feels mildly dated; and regular readers of political blogs may feel a lot of the material here (on John Kerry and his ‘Swift Boat’ attackers, Abu Ghraib, Fox News) has already been chewed over and spat out.
The jokes work as long as Franken sticks to the point of the book: delivering an entertaining polemic while rallying dispirited Democrats. The book is entertaining even when it examines President Bush’s views on social security, which is not easy. And it is effectively interspersed with bits of dialogue, many of them all too real.
While Franken can be accused of self-importance and pomposity, he is better, cleverer, and makes you laugh more than Michael Moore. Admittedly, Franken is full of himself and, in a sense, he can be accused of doing the same thing for which he criticises right-wing pundits: partial quotation and unfair innuendo. But that is part of the fun and the book works well. If Franken is right, even only partly right, the corruption, self-interest and cynicism of his subjects is astounding.
The last part of the book asks a question – now what? If he does stand for office, Al Franken is bound to come in for some of his own medicine. But Franken seems ready for that. He’s also ready for ‘a more united America, an America where books like this one aren’t necessary, but still sell millions of copies.’
Simon Alcock is a parliamentary researcher